Kindness is a Powerful Choice; with Dr. Erica Harris
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Kindness is a Powerful Choice; with Dr. Erica Harris | RDID; Ep 113

Dr. Erica Harris is an emergency physician at Einstein Hospital, and she also serves on the Board of Directors of Recovery Diaries. Our “Recovery Diaries in Depth” interview with Dr. Erica Harris is a wide-ranging, empathic conversation that you will be sure to want to hear.

Dr. Erica Harris’s experiences working in emergency medicine, surviving the trauma of COVID, are discussed in her interview and are also the subject of a beautiful documentary film we made several years ago, during the height of the pandemic where she thought about ideas of vulnerability and heroism, juxtaposing her career as a physician against that of her grandfather, a coal miner who fought for miner’s rights and safety.

In today’s profit-driven medical industry, many healthcare providers feel immense pressure to see as many patients in a shift as possible to maximize profits, but Dr. Harris emphatically believes that kindness and empathy don’t cost anything and they don’t make interactions take any longer. She is a true believer in vulnerable, intimate moments with her patients. She also is a strong advocate for de-stigmatizing and normalizing mental health, openly sharing that she is in therapy.

Dr. Erica Harris knows for sure that helping others, whether during a pandemic or not, has its toll that it takes on the mental health of providers, but she is here to remind us that vulnerability is a strength and that we can get through anything.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting www.wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

– Gabe

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / EDITOR: Gabriel Nathan | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman

 

 

 

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See Related Recovery Stories: Recovery Diaries In Depth Podcast, Trauma

Erica Harris, MD is an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Harris is the medical director of Einstein’s Trauma Intervention Program, a hospital-based violence intervention program that provides trauma informed services to violently injured young adults to improve their medical and psychological recovery trajectory and prevent re-injury. She completed a fellowship in Injury and Public Health Research at Drexel University College of Medicine, where she worked with the Healing Hurt People violence intervention program. As a faculty member of Einstein’s Center for Humanism, she facilitates department-and hospital-wide narrative medicine initiatives and has employed the visual and creative arts both as therapeutic modality and channel through which to engender compassion in others for victims of violence. She was awarded a Gold Humanism Scholarship to the Harvard Macy Institute for Educators in Health Professions for the development of an emergency department-based trauma-informed care curriculum and was named the 2023 Pennsylvania College of Emergency Physician’s Emergency Physician of the Year.

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